Death's Fangirl
by temporalTravesty
Summary: After Aradia and Sollux see the others safely on their way, they are left wandering the Furthest Ring. For Aradia, this is everything she's ever dreamed of - and maybe a bit more than she bargained for. Rated T for language. All characters belong to Andrew Hussie. Of course.
1. Chapter 1

**Death's Fangirl, Chapter One**

Aradia watched the meteor speed off into the void, carrying with it four of her closest friends – and two people who, she thought, could have been friends. But her duty – her life, ironic though it might be – was here. Here, beside the flaming bulk of the Green Sun, among the myriad drifting dream bubbles, shepherdess to the afterlife. And, besides, Sollux was here beside her.

"What now?" he asked.

"Jack will be here soon," she said with a grin. "We'll slow him down, and then we can be on our way."

"Cool." He looked around blankly – blankly was right, with one eye a flat white and the other missing – and shrugged. "Guy's not very punctual, is he."

"Wait for it..."

A black dot appeared in the distance, hardly perceptible against the black void behind it. "There," Aradia said, lifting her hands, a faint red aura surrounding her fingers.

"So, uh." Sollux raised his own fists awkwardly. "You think we can really take him on ourselves?"

"Oh, no, of course not, we'd be killed in seconds," Aradia said cheerfully, turning her sunniest smile on her friend. "But we can stop him for a few seconds. It'll be enough."

Jack Noir – scourge of two sessions, murderer of humans, trolls and Carapacians alike – was nearly upon them, and moving fast. His pitch-black wings spread majestically, lit a faint green by the light of the Sun. Even from here, Aradia could see the tiny glint off of his bared fangs.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

And, abruptly, he was upon them, swinging his bloodied black sword. As the blade came sweeping down toward Aradia's forehead, she thrust out her arms – and a burst of red power, clashing weirdly with the light of the green sun behind, exploded from her palms, enveloping her attacker. He froze, locked in an instant. She couldn't hold it for long, she knew. But even a few moments might be enough.

"What do you need me to do, Aradia?" Sollux asked.

"In a few seconds, I'm going to release him," she said, her voice tight with effort. "When I do, as soon as you see that red light go out, hurl him as far away as you can, as fast as you can."

"Okay."

"Wait for it..." She eyed the distance. Was that a white speck amid the blackness? Was it getting bigger? Closer?

Yes. Someone else was on their way, moving incredibly fast. Faintly, Aradia could make out wings. And in the color scheme of this weirdly twisted pair of sessions, white meant good. No time left. Got to try.

"Three... two... one... _go, Sollux!_" She released her spell, throwing herself backward and away from the demon's menacing blade. She heard Sollux grunt with effort, and saw crackles of red and blue energies surround Noir. The winged dog-man was abruptly hurled away.

He spread his wings to brake, and came to a halt. Even from this distance, Aradia could see the look of abject hatred on his face. He started back toward them –

And a white figure slammed into him from behind. He turned to confront this new threat, and for a moment Aradia watched him face off with an ivory woman, a twin in negative. In unison, they slowly raised their swords, faces frozen in identical canine snarls, and struck. Blow for blow, they matched each other, Jack trying to draw away and this pale attacker pressing forward.

"Come on, Sollux!" Aradia grabbed his hand. "We've done all we can. Time to go!"

It took them only a few minutes to retreat far enough into the dream bubbles that the Green Sun was no longer visible. "Aradia!" Sollux dragged her to a halt.

"What's the matter, Sollux?"

"I'm lost. Where's the sun? It's not like we're really far away from it."

"Actually, we are." Aradia gazed off into the blackness, in the direction she supposed the Sun might lie. "Space doesn't work logically here, and without a Space player to help..." She shrugged.

"So we're lost? What the fuck, Aradia! This was a _terrible_ idea!"

"Hey, relax," she told him with a smile. "I'm a Time player, remember? I can steer us pretty well. Just stick with me and you'll be fine."

Sollux stared at her for a long moment, his strange half-ghost eyes wide. Finally, he sighed. "Fine. Whatever. What now?"  
"Now, we explore." Aradia waved a hand dramatically across the space around them. The bluish forms of a few dream bubbles could be seen floating in the distance – and further still, a slight texture to the darkness, a suggestion of... tentacles? "We've the whole Afterlife to keep us busy, Sollux. Isn't it amazing?" With a flap of her wings, she drifted up and did a little twirl. Grinning, she continued, "Thousands of people to meet. We can see Nepeta, and Equius, and Feferi. We can see the trolls we would have been if we'd made a different choice. We can meet our ancestors, and the humans, and perhaps their ancestors, too... We can see Alternia, and the human world, what was it called – Earth! There's so _much_ to see, Sollux! I've never felt so _alive!_"

Aradia turned to look at him, and her smile froze. Where she expected to see her floating half-ghost friend, only blackness met her eyes. "...Sollux?"

She looked frantically around, but he was nowhere to be seen. "Sollux?"

"_Sollux!_"


	2. Chapter 2

**Death's Fangirl, Chapter Two:**

She screamed his name for a long time, darting back and forth as fast as her gossamer wings would carry her. But Sollux was gone. Lost among the bizarrities of space in the Furthest Ring. And for all Aradia knew, in the mish-mash that was time in this place, he could have been gone for years already. What had possessed her to let him out of her sight? How could she have been so _stupid_?

Finally, she calmed herself. One way or another, he was fine. There was nothing out here that could hurt him, half-ghost as he was. Besides, the guy had always had some sort of weird re-entry ticket to life. How many times had he died and popped right back to life? Two, three times if you counted the murder of his second dream-self at the hands of Jack Noir. And he was a survivor. Yeah. He'd be fine.

She fixed her sights on a bubble, off in the distance but closer than the others. This was what she was here for, to guide the deceased through their dreams. Besides, Sollux would have headed toward the nearest landmark as soon as he realized he was lost, right?

As she approached the bubble, details began to resolve themselves inside it. She could see a suggestion of pulsating green, and a faint trace of... pillars? Yes, pillars. It looked... like an ancient courthouse.

Aradia slipped effortlessly into the bubble, and found herself abruptly in another place. She floated before an ancient building, supported by an impressive array of baroque pillars. Behind it, a grandiose backdrop, was a sky filled with pulsing green swirls. Aradia knew this place well. This was the Land of Thought and Flow. Terezi's planet. Perhaps she'd see Terezi here? Aradia smiled faintly at the promise of seeing an old friend.

She opened the courthouse's door and went inside, walking now because there wasn't room in this hallway to flap her wings. Her footsteps echoed oddly in the silence, making her a little uncomfortable. Self-consciously she tried a flutter of her wings, lifting herself off the ground for a moment – but her right wing scraped the wall and she thought better of it.

"Hello?" she called. "Sollux? Terezi? Are you in here?"

From somewhere deep in the building, Aradia heard the faint reply. "So she's back, is she?" A girl's voice. Terezi!

"Hello?" Aradia called again. "Where are you?"

Now the voice was louder. "The Bitch of Time is back?"

"...what?" Aradia looked around, hurt. "Terezi?"

Suddenly, a figure leaped out of a room up ahead. Terezi. She was clad in the tattered rags of her Redglare outfit, her bright red glasses crooked on her face, hair wild. And in her hand she held her sword-cane, blade menacingly bared. She advanced on Aradia.

"Terezi, what's going on?" Aradia asked, a slight tremor weakening her voice. "What's the matter with you? H-have you seen Sollux?"

"What's the matter with _me_ she asks," Terezi said, almost to herself. The girl grinned, and Aradia took a step back, shocked by the maniacal expression on her friend's face. "What's the matter with me is _you!_" The last word came out as a shriek.

"M-me?"

"_You!_ You, you, you, you, you!" Terezi shook her head wildly, stamping her foot with each word. "_You killed us, Aradia!_"

"I... what?" She should have run. She knew she should have run. But Aradia was confused, hurt, and in sore need of a friend, so she stayed. "I didn't kill anyone, Terezi. Listen to me, Sollux is lost and I need to –"

The other girl took a deep sniff. "You're different, now. You smell different. Red. It's delicious... You were gray before. Gray and blue. Like the ocean, on a stormy day..."

Terezi seemed to have calmed down a little, so Aradia moved a little closer. "I was a robot for a while, if that's what you mean..."

Terezi nodded slowly, dreamily. She leaned forward, until she was almost nose-to-nose with Aradia. Softly, she said, "And then..." Her expression changed to one of intense anger and hatred. "_You killed us!_" Aradia stumbled backward, lost her balance, and fell to the ground, looking up at Terezi. "_Traitor, traitor!_" shrieked the blind girl. "_You reek of murder!_"

"_What did I do?_" Aradia shrieked back, almost in tears. "Tell me what I did!" she sobbed.

Terezi suddenly calmed again, and blinked blankly at Aradia. "You don't know?" she said, her tone full of childish wonder. "You don't remember?" She turned away, and spoke again, this time clearly to herself. "There's no justice if she doesn't remember. We'll just have to remind her."

The girl drew herself up, into the familiar legislacerator stance, finally looking like the girl Aradia had known. "I'll tell you what you did." She looked over her shoulder, locking eyes with Aradia – a motion Aradia knew was more for drama than anything else, since Terezi didn't use her eyes to see – and began.

"Something went wrong. Maybe it was a glitch in the robot body Equius made. Maybe something snapped deep inside you. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe..." Terezi's tone went dreamy, and she shook herself. Voice sharp again, she continued. "It began with Karkat. He made one of his usual idiotic 'shortcuts'. You said you'd have to go back and fix it. You were angry. You said, you said, you said, you said..." Her voice drifted again, and she slumped against a wall, continuing in a mutter. "You said he'd doomed you, that when you went back to fix it you'd be doomed to die. You said you had to show him what it was like." Terezi's voice died to a whisper. "So you killed him. Right then, right there. You pulled his heart out through his _chest!_" She screamed wordlessly. "We fought you. Tried to. But you were too strong. You killed us all, one by one by one by one by one..." She sat, leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes. "We died in pain and fear. And then I was here. And here I have been, stewing in my hate and rage and hate for so, so, so many years..."

Aradia was horrified. Could this be true? Had an alternate self of hers really snapped and murdered all of her friends in cold blood? She knew that, as a machine, she'd been cold and unyielding, yes. But a murderer? Slowly, Aradia reached out to comfort Terezi, reached out toward the girl's cheek...

Terezi's eyes snapped open, and with an animalistic snarl she bit down on Aradia's hand. Aradia screamed and pulled away – she felt flesh tear under Terezi's razor-sharp teeth – and she fled, pursued by Terezi's angry shrieks.

"You killed us all, Aradia! You killed us all, and now I have to make you pay!"

Aradia threw open the door and leapt into the air, flying toward the edge of the dream bubble as fast as her wings could carry her. Tears streamed down her face, her breath came out in ragged gasps. And behind her, she heard, faintly, Terezi's scream.

"_You killed us!_"


	3. Chapter 3

**Death's Fangirl, Chapter 3:**

She'd lost track of the days. Ever since that hideous encounter with Terezi – _alternate_ Terezi, she had to believe there was a difference, that it hadn't been _her_ who'd done those terrible things – Aradia had been flitting between dream bubbles, looking for Sollux but never finding him. She'd seen so many people – dear friends, long dead; alternative versions of people she knew; and a strange assortment of trolls she'd never met – but she'd never landed, never stopped to talk to them. She was terrified of what they might say, what new horrors they might reveal.

This bubble... the world looked familiar, but strangely different. It was raining, ever raining, and on the ground far below, swarming among the puddles, she could see specks of green, red, yellow... all the colors of the rainbow. Frogs. This must be Kanaya's world, the Land of Rain and Frogs. Except... Aradia had been to Kanaya's planet before. The landscape here was... different. She didn't remember those mountains on the horizon, and she thought she would have. Then again, this was a dream bubble, after all. It didn't have to perfectly reflect reality.

And there! A little ways off, red light glowing from the top, was a sight she recognized: Kanaya's volcano. The Forge. There was no doubt, now. This _must_ be Kanaya's world.

As she drew closer, Aradia could see a figure – no, two figures – silhouetted in the glow of the Forge, standing on the lip of the volcano's crater. They stood with their backs to her, but she could see their horns – for a troll, a sure identifier. The left figure was tall, slender, with one horn tapering to a simple point, but the other sharply bent back on itself, like a scorpion's stinger. Kanaya! And, beside her, a shorter troll with two short, nub-like horns. Karkat, of course.

She closed in further, and started to make out more details. Both Kanaya and Karkat wore robes, Kanaya in black and Karkat in candy-red, and now she was close enough to see the transparent wings sprouting from their shoulders. These two were from a timeline in which they'd both gone god-tier! What a world that must have been, with a fully realized Sylph of Space and Knight of Blood. Aradia wondered what had become of her in that timeline. Had she reached god-tier? Or had she been forced as a robot to go back and fix some minor error?

Aradia hesitated for a moment, hovering in place. What if her robot self had gone rogue in that timeline, too? Surely this Kanaya and this Karkat wouldn't blame her for their deaths, would they? They would understand that this wasn't the same Aradia, right? Terezi hadn't.

Finally, she resolved herself. She couldn't spend all of her time out here in the Furthest Ring terrified of her own friends. How would she ever find Sollux if she couldn't ask for help along the way? She took a deep breath, and called out, "Kanaya! Karkat!"

The figures turned, and for the first time she saw their faces. These... these were _not_ Kanaya and Karkat. These were trolls she'd never seen before. The one on the left – the girl she'd assumed was Kanaya – had pale skin, covered in a tracery of intricate tattoos, prominent fangs, an impressive array of piercings, and (like all the dead) empty, white eyes. The one on the right, the boy she'd thought to be Karkat, had a decidedly longer face than the boy she knew – and lacked her friend's perpetually angry expression – and the same white eyes. Both stared at her blankly for a long moment.

The girl abruptly smiled warmly. "Oh, dear, you must be Aradia, am I right? The Maid of Time."

"H-how do you know me? Who are you?"

"Well," the boy said, "I dislike allowing oneself to be categorized with only a few words, like a name, or a title. For example, you are Aradia Megido, but you are also the Maid of Time, and -"

"Shut it, Kankri," the girl said pleasantly, without looking away from Aradia. "Feel free to ignore him when he talks. I do. My name is Porrim Maryam, Maid of Space, and this is Kankri Vantas, Seer of Blood. I know you because you aren't Damara, but you do look like her. A lot cuter, though!" Porrim winked at her. "And with your Time godhood and all... well, who else could you be?"

Despite Kankri, Aradia felt comforted. Porrim seemed kind enough – and by the look of her, she must be Kanaya's ancestor. Aradia nodded. "Yes, I'm Aradia."

Kankri leaned forward, staring intently at Aradia. After a moment, he noticed her discomfort, and explained, "I apologize, I'm afraid I was caught off-guard by your... the _nonstandard_ character of your eyes, given our present location. Are you, perhaps, asleep?"

Aradia looked at him blankly. Porrim, seeing her expression, laughed merrily. "He means you have pupils, Aradia. You aren't dead."

Kankri sniffed. "Porrim, I understand that you are at times prone to speaking your mind without censorship, but I must ask you to refrain from such vitalist comments in the presence of our friend here."

"Oh," Aradia said. "No, I'm not asleep. I'm actually physically out here."

"Really?" Porrim looked surprised. "But, a Time player alone... how could you ever hope to find your way back out of the Furthest Ring?"

Aradia shrugged. "I don't intend to. I like it here. Or, at least, I did." She sighed. "Though I wish I were a better navigator. I lost someone, a while back, and I've been trying to find him ever since."

"Your matesprit?" Porrim asked.

"No," Aradia said. "Once, a long time ago, but then... well, he killed me, and then a lot of stuff happened... No. We're just good friends."

"Good." Gently, Porrim lifted off of her position atop the Forge and drifted over to Aradia. "You know," she said, "When it comes to drawing order from the chaos of spacetime out here, the Maids of Space and Time are a nearly unbeatable combination." She touched Aradia's chin, turning the shorter girl's head up to look at her. Aradia wondered why she didn't just float lower. "I think we could find him easily, working together."

"You're right, we could," Aradia agreed. Porrim was quite close now, but Aradia made no move to get away.

"Kankri, go harangue somebody else," Porrim said sweetly, eyes still locked on Aradia's face. "We'll be... busy for a while."

Aradia heard Kankri sigh. "Fine, fine. You know where to find me. Have fun, ladies."

"Why'd you send him away?" Aradia asked, craning her neck a little to look for him. "He could have helped."

Porrim gave a little smile. "Not with this, he couldn't." She leaned forward and planted a gentle kiss on Aradia's lips. Aradia stiffened in surprise. It was an unfamiliar experience – Porrim's lips pressed against hers, the gentle touch of the taller girl's fangs, the cool pressure of her lip ring... She'd kissed before, with Equius, and, long before that, with Sollux, but, well... when she'd been with Equius she'd been a robot, and Sollux was so long ago... and damn, Porrim was _good_ at this. Aradia melted into her embrace. She felt Porrim's tongue tap against her teeth, and let her in.

It was a long time before they got any work done.


End file.
